Pages

"Let books be your dining table, / And you shall be full of delights. / Let them be yourmattress,/And you shall sleep restful nights" (St. Ephraim the Syrian).

Monday, August 4, 2014

Russian Orthodoxy and Human Rights

In the spring issue of Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies, of which I am editor, we feature an article by Christopher Brenna on Orthodox approaches to the question of human rights. This is, as the author notes, a relatively new area for theological exploration. But the relationship of Orthodoxy and rights has been examined by sociologists and political scientists in a series of new books over the last decade, the newest of which, released just this spring, is by Kristina Stoeckl, a research associate in the Department of Political Sciences at the University of Vienna: The Russian Orthodox Church and Human Rights (Routledge, 2014). I contacted her for an interview, and here are her thoughts:

Kristina Stoeckl: In the preface of the book I reveal a piece of
biographical background and my reasons for engaging in the topic of the Russian
Orthodox Church and human rights. Readers of the preface will understand that I
have a fairly traditional Catholic background which, in my academic work, has
made me sensitive to the topic of religion in politics. They will also
understand that the book is the work of a European political theorist who
cannot but confront the towering paradigm of “postsecular society” expressed by Jürgen Habermas. I did not come to the topic of Russian Orthodoxy and human
rights because I had a pre-determined interested in human rights as such; I was
instead interested in the work of “translation” between religious content and
secular norms. The Russian Orthodox debate on human rights appeared like a good
example.
What readers of the preface will not find out is
that I have an academic background in Russian and comparative literature and
philosophy. I had the fortune to have very good teachers during my underground
studies of Russian literature and philosophy at the University of Innsbruck in
Austria: Fedor Dostoevskij, Vladimir Solov’ev, the philosophers of the Russian
Silver Age, the generation of Soviet semioticians around Jurij Lotman, and
later on also the religious thinkers of the Russian emigration were my early
guiding lights for approaching Russian thought and culture. This background is much
more evident in my first book and PhD-thesis entitled Community after
Totalitarianism and published in 2008. This
background explains why, despite all criticism of what the Russian Orthodox
Church represents today, my approach to the Russian Orthodox tradition is sympathetic.

AD: Your
first chapter notes the different responses to human rights discourse in modern
Orthodoxy, from those very critical and dismissive to those who are more
receptive. At the end of your chapter you note that the Russian Orthodox Church
has adopted rather a middle position here--not totally dismissive, but not
fully accepting, either. Why the middle position?
KS: I call the Russian Orthodox Church’s a middle
position, because it really stands for a response to the issue of human rights
that steers mid-way between a complete rejection of human rights and
acceptance. The Russian Orthodox Church published, in 2008, a document entitled
“The Russian Orthodox Church’s Teaching on Human Dignity, Freedom and Rights”.
This document fundamentally changed the position on human rights which the
Church had explained eight years earlier in the “Basis of the Social Doctrine”
in 2000 (in which human rights are rejected as a sign of apostasy), but it did
not go all the way to accepting human rights as a legal instrument that should
be fully endorsed and supported by the Church. Why did the Church adopt this
middle position? In the book, I give several reasons: relevance - the Moscow
Patriarchate recognized that it cannot continue to ignore or dismiss the topic
in its internal and external relations; politics – the Moscow Patriarchate
recognized that for having a voice in politics, it better speak the language of
contemporary politics; soteriology – the Church understood very well that
Orthodox believers live in secularized societies and ask from their Church to
express itself and provide guiding lines on topics of contemporary relevance; and
lastly individuals – the individual members of the Russian Orthodox Church
involved in the working out of the document between 2006 and 2008 were not
unanimous in their assessment of human rights, some wanted total dismissal,
some wanted endorsement. The document is a compromise between these actors. It
is important to be aware that the individual dynamics may since have changed. I
am not sure whether today, in 2014, a new document on human rights of the
Russian Orthodox Church would still occupy a middle-position or would not
demonstrate a regress to earlier, dismissive positions.

AD: You
also note in your first chapter that religious groups in a majority position
tend to be less favourably disposed to human rights than to minority religious
groups. Have you found, e.g., that Catholics or Jews or Muslims in Russia
invoke human rights language more than their Russian Orthodox counterparts?

KS: In the book I note in the first and analyse in
detail in the last chapter that majority religions tend to be less favourably
disposed to human rights than minority religious groups, who invoke the right
to religious freedom in order to assure their survival and flourishing.
Minority religious groups need the protection of the international human rights
regime where majority religions simply rely on traditional privileges. This
dynamic is clearly visible in the Russian case, both in the debates around the
1997 law on religious freedom and in cases on religious freedom that have reached
the European Court of Human Rights. It is, however, not unique to Russia. Also
many Western European countries are in the process of discovering that they
have become, due to immigration, religiously pluralistic societies where
individual human rights trump the historical privileges of waning majority
religions. I have not done systematic research on the way in which minority
religious groups appeal to human rights, but I refer the interested reader to
the work of my colleague Effie Fokas, who is conducting a long-term research project on
precisely this point.

AD: You
note that post-1991, Russia had two very different paths before it, and in the
end chose the path of "religious nationalism." What motivated that
choice--was it purely an anti-Western spirit, or was there something positive
to it?

KS: The two paths I mean are “religious nationalism”
and “religious renewal”. A religious renewal would have required a thorough
process of critical self-reflection, a laying open of the guilt which the
Church had heaped upon itself during the decades of Soviet collaboration and a
renewal of the Church in the spirit of religious dissidence. This did not
happen; what we got instead was continuity and strengthening of the religious
apparatus. I think this choice was motivated less by ideological reasons (anti-
versus pro-Western) but mostly by pragmatic considerations. The religious
nationalism promised more public echo, more political support, and it
apparently convinced many Russians. At the same time, inside the leadership
structure of the Church and on the level of parish communities pockets of
liberal renewal continued and continue to exist. Was there something positive
to the path of religious nationalism? I don’t think so, but inasmuch as I
interpret it not as an ideological, but as a pragmatic development, the only
positive element there was is that the official religious nationalism has left
some space for alternative viewpoints to emerge, which enjoy less visibility,
but continue to exist. I should also add that I feel this space is
significantly narrower today than it was in the period I study in this book.

AD: You
note in your second chapter that the 2000 document "Bases of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church" was very much the product of the
Department for External Church Relations, headed by now-Patriarch Kiril, who
seems to have positioned himself somewhere between "liberals" and
"zealots." Has he maintained that balance since taking over as patriarch?

Source: Mospat.ru

KS: This is the much debated question among scholars
dealing with the Russian Orthodox Church! On the first glance, it would seem
that Kirill has given up his middle-stance in favour of more fundamentalist
positions. He has appointed some real hardliners to important positions inside
the Church, for example Vsevolod Chaplin who became responsible for
Church-Society Relations. Since 2009, when Kirill became Patriarch, we have
also seen a number of events which have tipped the balance in favour of the
zealots: for example the trial of the punk-band Pussy Riot, the legislation
against “homosexual propaganda” and “offense of religious feelings.” But there
are also examples to the contrary, like the relatively balanced stance which
Kirill has assumed in the present crisis in Ukraine (which I have analysed elsewhere). Leaving aside for a moment the position of
Patriarch Kirill and his successful or unsuccessful attempts to maintain an
independent position for the Church, what is clear is that in foreign and also
in Russian public perception, this independence has already been lost. The
Moscow Patriarchate is now widely perceived to stand unconditionally on the
side of Putin and in support of his anti-Western politics.

AD: You
note that the history in the "Bases" document attempts to sketch out
a very different lineage for any notion of human rights in Russia, away from
Western history, and all the way back to Byzantium. Why is that? Why the
constant effort to so vociferously differentiate itself from "the
West"?

KS: Not the entire “Bases of the Social Doctrine”
document, but definitely its section on human rights conveys a strong Orthodox
anti-Westernism that goes back to the Slavophiles and to Orthodox resentments
against the Latin West. The paradoxical feature about this anti-Westernism is
that it comes in a format that is influenced by “Latin” Christian models of
theological reasoning. In my interviews for this book it became clear that the
Russian Orthodox Church has learned (and wanted to learn) from Catholic and
Protestant theologians in matters of social teaching: conferences were held,
working groups were created, position-documents were exchanged. This also explains
the deep disappointment about the “Human Rights Doctrine” expressed by the
German Protestant Churches, an episode I explain in chapter 4 of the book.
These Western theologians felt that they had been part of a real exchange and
had accompanied the Russian Orthodox colleagues in a “learning process” – and then
they saw that the Russian Orthodox Church had given the entire debate an anti-Western
twist.

AD: You
note (p. 101) that the Church today has shifted away from "inward"
focus (on church-state relations) to "outward" focus on issues of
"society, family, and values." Does that reflect new-found strength
in the Church? What are the risks for this strategy? And are Russian Orthodox
Christians fully supportive of this shift or--to go back to your opening
discussion of the Pussy Riot--are they generally more ambivalent?

KS:Yes, I do believe that this reflects a new-found
strength in the Church structure. For a large part of the 1990s and 2000s the
Church was busy with sorting out its own matters: the restitution of Church
property once confiscated by the Soviet state, the establishment of courses
that teach Orthodox “culture” in public schools, the building up of a system of
Orthodox military chaplaincy, etc. Under Patriarch Kirill the Church has now
moved to issues of society, family, and values. It has taken a firm moral
conservative stance on issues of life, sexuality and gender, and religious
freedom. I argue in the book that this shift does not only come from inside the
Russian Orthodox Church, but is also the result of cooperation between Russian
Orthodox actors and traditionalist sections inside the Catholic, Protestant and
Evangelical Churches. My feeling is that ordinary Russian believers feel
somewhat puzzled by this shift. The remaking of post-Soviet Russia as the
world’s leading nation that respects “traditional values” is deeply
paradoxical.

AD: Your data (p. 106-07) revealed that "since 2008, representatives of the Church and the
Russian government have pursued an active human rights agenda at international
level, in particular in the Human Rights Commission of the United
Nations." Clearly it seems to me that one area where we have recently seen
evidence of this is Russia's support for Syria against US intervention in the
on-going civil war. Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church claim to have been
motivated here by their concern to protect the rights of fellow Orthodox Christians in Syria. What do you make of these arguments?
I have not followed the Church’s argumentation on
Syria closely and I was not aware that Putin has motivated his support for
Syria (and Russia’s veto-position in the UN Security Council) on grounds of
intra-Orthodox solidarity. I would interpret this stance merely as a rhetorical
tool to cover up what the Russian agenda really is about: preventing
regime-change at all costs.

AD: In
your opening, and then again in the conclusion of your book, you return to the
idea of Charles Taylor in speaking of a "mutual fragilization" as
taking place in the encounter between Russian Orthodoxy and modernity. Explain
this for us a little bit. Charles Taylor's concept of “mutual fragilization”
adds an important feature to the paradigm of the “post-secular”. Habermas’
notion of post-secular society confidently assumes that religious and secular
actors may learn from each other for the good of society as a whole; mutual
fragilization reminds us of the fact that getting to know the other better may
not always result in greater understanding, but in greater insecurity and self-reflexivity.
Insecurity and self-reflexivity are positive, because hardened-up and
doubt-free identities can be very frightening, whether religious or secular. In
the history of the Russian Orthodox tradition, the period of the Russian
émigré-theologians Sergij Bulgakov, Vladimir Lossky and Georges Florovsky strikes
me as an example of “mutual fragilization”, where both the Orthodox as well as some
of their Western interlocutors were faced with the moral breakdown of their
respective traditions (Bolshevism in the East, Fascism and Nazism in the West),
recognized that they were facing similar questions, learned from another and
enriched their respective standpoints through encounter with the other. In that
particular case, the encounter resulted in the neo-patristic turn in theology,
a point I have made in my book Community after Totalitarianism.AD: Very
interestingly for me in a theology department, you end your book by noting that
you are not a theologian but a political scientist, but nevertheless "it
is there--in theology--where the future trajectory of the encounter of
Orthodoxy and modernity is being mapped out" (p.131). Why do
you say that? Tell us a bit more about how you see this trajectory being mapped
out.

KS: I have studied the Russian Orthodox intellectual
tradition for many years now and I have covered important periods from Solov’ev
and Dostoevskij to the émigré-theologians, to late Soviet dissidence and
contemporary debates. My impression is that during all this history, the
Russian Orthodox Church has found itself tied to the state, has actually
actively tied itself to the state and has failed to give an independent
response to society and the world. These responses have come from elsewhere
inside and outside the Church, from theology and religious philosophy. Such
voices also exist today and many of my Orthodox friends and colleagues
understand themselves as engaged in precisely this endeavour. It is them that I
had in mind when I wrote those pages, obviously with the hope that theology may
at one point prevail over reasons of church-state relations. At the Institute for Human
Sciences in Vienna we organized a workshop on
“Orthodox political theologies” earlier this year, where we brought together
theologians from Russia, Western Europe and the United States. The aim of the
publication that will come out of this meeting is precisely to take stock of
the ways in which Orthodox theologians map out the relation between their
churches and politics.

AD: Sum
up what you hope the book accomplishes

KS: The book wants to make a contribution to
contemporary debates on the compatibility of religious claims and secular norms.
It wants to challenge the prevailing theories of religious-secular
accommodation by studying a “difficult” case like the Russian Orthodox Church’s
treatment of human rights. I may not have managed to give full answers in
chapter 5 of this book, but I am confident that I raised relevant questions
which I intend to explore further. The book also wants to offer a balanced
account of the ideas and politics inside the Russian Orthodox Church. It wants
to highlight one aspect that is frequently overlooked in research in this
field, and that is the interactions and relatedness of the Russian Orthodox
Church with religious actors outside Russia, its engagement on the level of
international institutions and its external relations.

AD: What
projects--books, articles--are you at work on now?
KS: Since finishing the book I have tried to work
further on the theoretical questions that emerge from my Russian case study. I
have made some preliminary considerations on what I perceive as “theology's blind
spot” in contemporary theorizing of religion and politics here and I plan to develop these ideas further into a
full-fledged theoretical contribution. I am also working on a project to study
present-day Russian moral conservatism. You can follow my work on my website and at the IWM.

Subscribe To

About Me

I am the editor of Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies; author of Orthodoxy and the Roman Papacy; a tenured associate professor and chairman of the Dept. of Theology and Philosophy at the University of Saint Francis in Fort Wayne, Indiana; and a subdeacon of the Ukrainian Greco-Catholic Church (UGCC) resident in the Eparchy of St. Nicholas of Chicago.